Page 81 of Shadow of Doubt

Harvath and Barton both looked at each other and said the same word in unison: “Fuck.”

They then looked back down at the tablet. Harvath used his fingers to move the imagery around until he found what he was looking for.

Zooming in, he said, “Right here. The gas dock. I’ll dump off the port side.”

“What am I supposed to tell them?” Barton asked. “We stopped there on the way in and already fueled up.”

“You’ll come up with something,” he replied, opening his backpack and pulling out everything he needed. “Let’s get moving.”

Within minutes, Barton was ready to go. As Harvath got into his wet suit and prepped the rest of his gear, Barton activated the running lights, fired up the engines, and, after making sure all systems were functioning, had the commandos cast off the lines.

Moving toward the gas dock, he radioed Nicholas a SITREP to bring him up to speed on what they were doing. Phase Two had officially begun.

The gas dock was not its own stand-alone structure. It was at the end of a long pier and resembled the crosspiece on the letterT.

Barton slowed as he neared and placed his engines in neutral. Glancing toward the stern, he caught a glimpse of Harvath as he slipped over the side and entered the water without making a sound.

CHAPTER 40

With each stroke, Harvath was reminded of the pain he felt throughout his body.This is what you get,he thought to himself. This is what happens when you’re the first to volunteer for everything.

He didn’t need to be doing this part of the operation. Technically, he could have “volunteered” Barton, or any of the other guys, for it. But that wasn’t who he was. And maybe that was his problem.

It was one thing to not ask the members of your team to do anything you yourself wouldn’t do. That was called leadership. It was something else entirely to never ask them to do the hard things because you were too busy doing them yourself.

Not allowing people to undertake difficult tasks was not only selfish, but also robbed them of the opportunity to better themselves. Trusting people to perform to the best of their ability, and then letting them do so, was likewise part of leadership. As he swam, he wondered if that was a lesson he should more tightly embrace. It certainly couldn’t hurt to explore.

Pushing the pain and ruminations from his mind, he focused on his objective and, kicking his flippers even harder, picked up the pace.

The harbor stretched for over forty acres and had enough berths for seven hundred vessels. Had Barton not gotten him as close as he had to Tsybulsky’s boat, he would have been swimming for a good ten or fifteen minutes longer.

Moving silently past the hulls of the enormous yachts was like threading his way through a pod of giant steel beasts, sleeping in thecold, dark water. As they groaned against their moorings, he could feel the vibrations ripple across his body. There was an otherworldliness, an eeriness to it all.

The quiet, black stillness of the harbor, however, soon receded as he closed in on Tsybulsky’s vessel.

Gathered along the pier, groups of people gawked and took pictures, making enough noise to echo off the neighboring boats. They added a layer of audible camouflage to Harvath’s approach. They also helped keep the crew distracted—something absolutely critical to his mission as the LED hull lights had been activated and were illuminating the water around the yacht’s stern. The stern area was where he needed to zip-tie the HEL-STARs.

The Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 was designed with an open tail and a series of steps that ended right above the water level. The final step was its widest and functioned as the swim platform. Beneath it, at both the port and starboard edges, was another design element—a trio of narrow carbon-fiber tubes. Painted red, white, and green to honor the car manufacturer’s Italian heritage, they resembled pool railings. They were the only attachment points he could access from the water.

Knowing Tsybulsky could be back at any moment, he worked fast. After three deep breaths to saturate his lungs with oxygen, he took a final breath and soundlessly slipped beneath the surface.

The LED hull lights pushed illumination from the stern outward, so he ducked under the middle of the boat and swam aft. The lights were so bright, he didn’t even need his headlamp.

While being careful not to be illuminated or to cast a shadow, he pulled one marker light at a time from the mesh bag at his waist and zip-tied them in place to the outermost tube on the port side. After activating them in IR mode, he swam back to where he had started, quietly broke the surface, and filled his lungs once more with air.

Once he was ready, he slipped back underwater and repeated the process, this time on the starboard side.

Satisfied with the job that he had done and confident that the HEL-STARs were securely in place, he swam away from Tsybulsky’s boat andout toward the middle of the harbor, where Barton would be picking him up.

Using his pain as motivation, he leaned into it and propelled himself with as much speed as his legs and his flippers would muster.

Several minutes later, when he arrived at the rendezvous point, he activated his own HEL-STAR and waited for the team to detect his IR beam through their night vision. It didn’t take long. Soon enough, he could hear the rumble of the big V-8s as the BRABUS Shadow approached.

As they slowly moved past, one of the commandos tossed him a line. Harvath grabbed hold and pulled himself up close against the hull as Barton piloted the craft toward the mouth of the harbor.

Even though his muscles were tired and he was dipping into his reserves to maintain his grip, it felt good to no longer have to be kicking. All he had to do was hang on a little longer.

The moment they cleared the final dock, Barton put the BRABUS in neutral and they pulled Harvath aboard. As he pulled off his mask and fins, one of the Ukrainians tossed him a towel. He was halfway out of his wet suit when Barton put the boat back in gear and headed for the open ocean. They needed to be in place and all set up before Tsybulsky passed.

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